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Since beginning his second term in office, President Trump has taken a sledgehammer to climate action. His administration has made plans to expand offshore oil and gas drilling, canceled billions of dollars in clean energy projects, rolled back tax credits for electric vehicles, pulled the United States out of the Paris climate agreement, released a report that downplays the risks of climate change, and on and on. Climate experts have been vocal about the fact that Trump is setting back climate action, which puts the entire world at risk. The U.S. is the second-most polluting country in the world, behind only China. China, however, has been investing heavily in renewable power, and its total greenhouse gas emissions have been dropping as a result. Now, a new analysis by ProPublica and the Guardian attempts to quantify what that setback could actually look like. What the analysis found Trumps anti-climate policies could release so many extra greenhouse gases over the next decade that they could lead to as many as 1.3 million more temperature-related deaths globally, in the 80 years after 2035, the analysis found. That estimate covers heat-related deaths, minus the fewer deaths that will occur from cold temperatures. Already, heat is the leading cause of all weather-related deaths, and climate change has led to a noticeable uptick in heat related deaths. In the U.S. alone, heat-related deaths have increased by more than 50% since 2000, according to the Yale School of Public Health. The 1.3 million excess deaths does not include, the outlets note, the massive number of deaths from climate changes broader impacts, like droughts, floods, diseases, hurricanes, wildfires, and even lower crop yields. The number is, admittedly, a small figure when compared to the total number of deaths caused by temperatures changing because of climate change. A 2021 study on the mortality costs of carbon projected that, between 2020 and 2100, the planet will see 83 million temperature-related excess deaths under a business as usual emissions scenario. The ProPublica/Guardian analysis acknowledges this, but adds that the figure attributed to Trumps policies speaks to the human cost of prioritizing U.S. corporate interests over the lives of people around the globe. How the research was conducted To conduct the analysis, the outlets used scientific models to estimate how many additional emissions will be released into the atmosphere because of Trumps policies. They also took into account the mortality cost of carbon metric, which predicts temperature-related deaths from emissions. In responses to questions from ProPublica and the Guardian, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) contested the science underpinning their analysis, dismissing it as moral posturing. It added that the core calculation method ignores the dramatic uncertainties that dominate long-term climate projections. But climate scientists say the metric is valid, they report. Prior to Trump, we had the most ambitious climate policy that the U.S. has ever come up withour best effort to date by far of addressing this growing problem, Marshall Burke, an economist at the Doerr School of Sustainability at Stanford University, told the Guardian. When we roll these things back, he added, it is fundamentally affecting the damages were going to see around the world.”
Category:
E-Commerce
The gap between the richest and poorest Americans is widening in what Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has called a “bifurcated economy,” as the cost of living skyrockets from housing to food prices, but wages for most workers remain stagnant. Basically, high-income individuals are doing well, while lower-income consumers are struggling more and more. That situation has sparked discussions about whether we’re in a so-called “K-shaped economy.” A K-shaped economycoined after the shape of the letter: a horizontal line marked by two lines, with one going down and the other uphappens when the economy is rolling along, and then it suddenly loses steam and begins to drop. And then, after a period, the Fed comes in and lowers interest rates to get things going again, professor Peter Ricchiuti of Tulane University’s A.B. Freeman School of Business tells Fast Company. Simply put, in a K-shaped economy, the Federal Reserve sees the economy weakening, possibly leading to a recession, so it lowers interest rates to stimulate the economy in order to try and avoid that. “This action really benefits the upper class, as it makes the value of their investmentsstocks, bonds, and real estaterise,” Ricchiuti explains. “More often than not, the wealthy are better off than when the downturn began.” “Meanwhile, the middle class is hurt even more,” he continues. “If they have any savings at all, its invested in money market funds and bank CDs. These now offer lower returns because interest rates on those instruments have been lowered.” But “it’s not the Feds fault,” Ricchiuti adds. “The most powerful tool in [the Federal Reserve’s] toolbox is lowering interest rates. Theyre trying to boost the economy but, in doing so, they are widening the economic gap.” So, are we headed toward a recession? “I do think the economy is slowing down and potentially moving into recessionary conditions that may show up next year,” Melina Murren Vosse, assistant professor of finance at the University of San Diego’s Knauss School of Business, tells Fast Company. “Talk of the AI bubble, general overvaluations, and global trade uncertainty seem to be making markets squeamish lately.” Ricchiuti says it’s “tricky” to tell whether we’re heading to a recession “because unemployment numbers are the key indicator of a recession, and we haven’t gotten unemployment levels for quite some time.” “There just isn’t enough information to feel really comfortable making a determination,” he adds. That’s in part because the Trump administration fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which collects, crunches, and publishes those unemployment numbers. On August 1, President Donald Trump ordered the firing of Erika McEntarfer after the agency released a report that showed hiring had slowed down significantly over the past three months. Then, a government shutdown further delayed the collection and release of the numbers. The BLS last released unemployment numbers for the month of August. We are still waiting on September and October numbers, and the BLS said it will not release a full U.S. jobs report for October until it has a full report for November, which it also pushed back to December 16. Generally speaking, a recession is when there are two consecutive quarters of negative gross domestic product (GDP) growth. But it’s impossible to determine if that’s happened because the numbers haven’t come out. However, Ricchiuti notes that even though people fear a recession, it generally lasts only a year, while an economic expansion lasts seven years, he says. So even if you’re fearing a recession, it may be more temporary than it might seem.
Category:
E-Commerce
The Labor Department said Wednesday that it will not be releasing a full jobs report for October because the 43-day federal government shutdown meant it couldn’t calculate the unemployment rate and some other key numbers. Instead, it will release some of the October jobs data most importantly the number of jobs that employers created last month along with the full November jobs report, now due a couple of weeks late on Dec. 16. The department’s “employment situation” report usually comes out the first Friday of the month. But the government shutdown disrupted data collection and delayed the release of the reports. For example, the September jobs report, now coming out Thursday, was originally due Oct. 3. The monthly jobs report consists of two parts: a survey of households that is used to determine the unemployment rate, among other things; and the “establishment” survey of companies, nonprofits and government agencies that is used to track job creation, wages and other measurements of labor market health. The Labor Department said Wednesday that the household survey for October could not be conducted because of the shutdown and could not be done retroactively. But it was able to collect the hiring numbers from employers, and those will come out with the full November report. Wednesday’s announcement means the September jobs numbers will likely get extra scrutiny Thursday. They are the last full measurement of hiring and unemployment that Federal Reserve policymakers will see before they meet Dec. 9-10 and decide whether to cut their benchmark interest rate for the third time this year. The jobs numbers have lately been contentious. After the July jobs report proved disappointing, President Donald Trump abruptly fired the official responsible for collecting the data, Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner Erika McEntarfer. McEntarfer herself was quick to say there was nothing suspicious about Wednesday’s announcement. No conspiracy here, folks, she posted on the social media site Bluesky. “BLS was entirely shutdown for six weeks. Payroll data from firms can be retroactively collected for October. The household survey cannot be conducted retrospectively. This is just a straightforward consequence of having all field staff furloughed for over a month.” ____ This story has been corrected to show that the September jobs report is coming out Thursday, not Friday. Paul Wiseman, AP economics writer AP Economics Writer Christopher Rugaber contributed to this report.
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E-Commerce
Agentic artificial intelligence is coming, whether youre ready for it or not. A PwC survey published earlier this year found that 88% of U.S. companies are beefing up their agentic AI budgets, and a broad majority have adopted AI agents in some capacity. When it comes to using AI agents for shopping or in the commerce space, more than half of consumers say they already are, or will be doing so by the end of the year. But many people still arent quite sure how or when to use AI agents. They may not know where to find them, how to prompt them and, in some cases, if the agent they are interacting with is legit or potentially a disguised bad actor. Fetch, an AI firm founded in 2017 in the U.K., is trying to make the transition to using AI agents for everyday tasks a bit easier and smooth out some of those issues. On Wednesday, the company launched three new products: ASI:One, a new large language model (LLM) interface for interacting with agents; Fetch Business, a portal allowing brands and companies to claim and verify brand agents (similar to a social media-inspired verification system); and Agentverse, a directory and depository of more than 2 million AI agents. Perhaps the most interesting new product, from a laymans perspective, is ASI:One. It’s an interface in which users can interact with AI agents and prompt them to perform certain taskssuch as book a vacation with all flights and hotels, or buy me new shoes, which would prompt specific brand agents for airlines, hotels, and even shoe brands to assist the user. Humayun Sheikh, Fetchs founder and CEO, thinks that the interface will help people learn to utilize AI agents and navigate the agentic AI space in a way similar to how Google helped people learn to navigate the broader internet decades ago. “Google created discoverability and trust for websites. We’re creating the same foundation for agents, Sheik said in a statement provided to Fast Company. There are already more than 1,000 verified brand agents on the platform, including companies such as Costco, Alaska Airlines, Pepsi, and Adidas. That means that users can interact directly with those agentsin a way that they may interact with a human employeeto get information related to prices, product information, and more. The hope, as Sheikh puts it, is that Fetchs platform will help connect consumers directly with brands through agents, and help create a new ecosystem in which AI agents have more utility to the general public in a more personal and pragmatic way. Further, Fetch hopes the personal element of its platform will help get consumers more specific informationdiffering from broader LLM models, such as ChatGPT. Instead of just finding information, your personal AI coordinates with verified brand agents to get things done, Sheikh said. This isn’t searching for options separately and hoping they work together; its orchestration. Your personal AI understands how you make decisions, then works with brand agents that have real inventory, pricing, and booking capabilities. AI agents are quickly moving from an abstract concept to an everyday utility. Fetch is betting that clarity, trust, and verification will be the missing ingredients that help some consumers who have been holding back on adopting the technology to embrace it. If the company succeeds, the way we shop, book, plan, and interact with brands could feel less like surfing the web and more like delegating to a capable assistantone that actually follows through.
Category:
E-Commerce
President Trump nominated Stuart Levenbach as the next director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, choosing a person who has no banking or financial services experience to run a bureau that has been effectively inoperable since Trump was sworn into office. Levenbach is currently an associate director inside the Office of Management and Budget, handling issues related to natural resources, energy, science and water issues. Levenbach’s resume shows significant experience dealing with science and natural resources issues, acting as chief of staff of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration during Trump’s first term. The CFPB has been nonfunctional much of the year. Many of its employees have been ordered not to work, and the only major work the bureau is doing is unwinding the regulations and rules it put into place during President Trump’s first term and during the Biden administration. The bureau’s current acting director is Russell Vought, President Trump’s budget director and Levenbach’s boss. Under the Vacancies Act, Vought can only act as acting director for 210 days, but now that President Trump has nominated someone to the position, that clock has now been suspended until the Senate approves or denies Levenbach’s confirmation as director. The bureau was created after the 2008 financial crisis as part of the Dodd-Frank Act, a law passed to overhaul the financial system and require banks to hold more capital to avoid another financial crisis. The CFPB was created to be a independent advocate for consumers to help them avoid bad actors in the financial system. Ken Sweet, AP business writer
Category:
E-Commerce
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